where to start a story

[Ireth]

Okay this can lead to a debate about when the story really starts...
For example; does the Hobbit start...
when Gandalf meets Frodo,
when the Dwarves arrive,
when the dwarves leave,
when Bilbo first becomes a "burglar" at the Trolls,
when Bilbo finds the ring or
when we learn how quiet and pleasant Bilbo's life is so the adventure can highlight how much he changes...

It starts "in a hole in the ground", of course.

 

[Scribble]

Sometimes the first two chapters are written to get you started, not the story. Later, with good (and by good I mean merciless) editing, you lop off that dead limb of a beginning. Too often writers become too attached to the beginning, spend hours crafting that perfect opening line... and there it sits, a boring chunk of nothing that causes anyone to pick up the book and read a few lines to toss it down and keep looking. There may be good story in there, but they never get that far.

 

[Scribble]

It starts "in a hole in the ground", of course.

Nice!

I have come to doubt whether there is much benefit in comparing any modern story to The Hobbit or LOTR. The mode in which they are told is the story teller. "Come round folks, let me spin you a tale..." The author's voice is never (rarely) seen today.

"In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit", is how I would begin a story I tell my kids. if The Hobbit were "modernized" it would begin differently. The first few paragraphs would get hacked off.

It would begin here:

All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which a white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots. "Good morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat. "What do you mean?" be said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is morning to be good on?"

It would not say "Gandalf", it would say "the old man". We'd find out later that he is a wizard, and what a Hobbit is.

 

[Weaver]

There's a fantasy novel that I'm very fond of which begins with someone asking one of the MCs, "Is your friend really what he says he is?"

Instant attention-grabber, at least for me: What does this guy tell people he is? And is it true? And why is this other person asking? Does the person she's asking know the answer? Will that person tell her, or let her wonder? There's no action involved in this scene, but the conversation is both an excellent hook and a good way to introduce the reader to the characters and overall situation at this point in the story.

 

[Weaver]

Well, if we're discussing beginnings of specific books...

"It was starting to end, after what seemed most of an eternity to me."

Thus starts the first book in an excellent (and pre-1977!) fantasy series. Again, it is not a flashy beginning, nor an action-filled one (although there's a minor fight scene soon enough, and maybe the latest edition of the novel doesn't have the mild cussing blanked out), and certainly not one in which the entire situation is detailed. (Kinda hard to do that, since it is written in first person and the protagonist doesn't know yet.) It happens at the point where something important changes for the viewpoint character.

 

[Weaver]

Sometimes the first two chapters are written to get you started, not the story. Later, with good (and by good I mean merciless) editing, you lop off that dead limb of a beginning. Too often writers become too attached to the beginning, spend hours crafting that perfect opening line... and there it sits, a boring chunk of nothing that causes anyone to pick up the book and read a few lines to toss it down and keep looking. There may be good story in there, but they never get that far.

With me, what I write first as the beginning of a story almost always gets pushed back further in the finished version. On a short story, that may only be a couple of paragraphs, but on a novel... The very first scene of a story I wrote with my twin ended up halfway through the second book in the series. (Could be further than that, soon -- he's revising again, and book 2 is going to be books 2, 3 and 4 by the time it's all over.)

But yes, some writing has to be done just to get it out of the writer's head so he/she can move on to the real story. Do not be the kind of author who bores the reader with The Entire History of This Fantasy World Until Now as your first chapter.

 

[Mythopoet]

I have come to doubt whether there is much benefit in comparing any modern story to The Hobbit or LOTR. The mode in which they are told is the story teller. "Come round folks, let me spin you a tale..." The author's voice is never (rarely) seen today.

Which makes me, as a reader, very sad. The books I enjoy the most always have a strong sense of a competent story teller in the background. It doesn't need to be explicit in the prose (it probably shouldn't, but I wouldn't rule it out) but I like to feel as if I'm being taken along on a journey by a guide I can trust to get me to the end safe and satisfied. Too many modern books only have a sense of "crap is happening in a void".

"In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit", is how I would begin a story I tell my kids. if The Hobbit were "modernized" it would begin differently.

And that's exactly what I hate about the movies, the "modernization".

 

[Mivo]

Sometimes the first two chapters are written to get you started, not the story.

This is a good point. I mostly write short stories (as a way to populate my imaginary world with individuals, events, locations, bits of what may become history, and so on), but here too the "getting started" part is always the hardest. If I concern myself with a hook-y start, instead of just getting something blotted on that scary empty page, I'll probably still sit there the next day. A beginning, any beginning!, is better than none, even if the claws and fangs of editing will leave it altered or shredded.

From my subjective perspective as a reader, a novel has about fifty to seventy pages to "grab" me. If I'm still uninterested in what's going on by then, or worse: if I feel bored, I'll probably be done and move on to something else. Conveniently, this is also often the average size of ebook samples on iBooks (and presumably it is the same for the Kindle Amazon store). With shorts it is different, and harder to determine, and it's also less of a question: Shorts are short, you almost have to jump right into the action (if there is action).

Admittedly, I'm sometimes more persistent, e.g. with Tad Williams' stuff. He almost always seems to start in ways that don't spark my curiosity, but his stories are so rich, it's just worth the boredom in the beginning.

(Also new here, though I registered last year already. Greetings!)

 

[Weaver]

If I concern myself with a hook-y start, instead of just getting something blotted on that scary empty page, I'll probably still sit there the next day.

I know what you mean. I'm no good at "hook-y" beginnings (although I can spot one when I see one), and if I insist on the first on-page draft being perfect, I get nowhere.

A beginning, any beginning!, is better than none, even if the claws and fangs of editing will leave it altered or shredded.

Um... We're not like that. Editors, I mean. We don't actually have claws and fangs.

From my subjective perspective as a reader, a novel has about fifty to seventy pages to "grab" me. If I'm still uninterested in what's going on by then, or worse: if I feel bored, I'll probably be done and move on to something else. Conveniently, this is also often the average size of ebook samples on iBooks (and presumably it is the same for the Kindle Amazon store). With shorts it is different, and harder to determine, and it's also less of a question: Shorts are short, you almost have to jump right into the action (if there is action).

50 pages? You are generous. I one loaned a friend a novel that I was very fond of, and he read all of 5 pages before deciding that he didn't like the characters, didn't like the plot, and wasn't going to read the rest of it. And he'd been the one to insist that I loan him this book because he wanted to read it. *shakes head* Apparently not having an epic battle in the first chapter is sometimes seen as a flaw in the writing.

Admittedly, I'm sometimes more persistent, e.g. with Tad Williams' stuff. He almost always seems to start in ways that don't spark my curiosity, but his stories are so rich, it's just worth the boredom in the beginning.

No one who lacks patience should try to read a Tad Williams novel anyway. He's a great writer, but his novels are enormous! (This is not a complaint -- I like big books, I cannot lie.)